How Do You Plan a Home Renovation in the UK, Step by Step?
A calm, six-stage route through a UK home renovation, with links to our detailed guides on each stage.
How Do You Make a Whole Home Feel Cohesive, Room to Room?
A practical guide to a cohesive home: what to repeat in every room, where to start, and a worked example in a 1930s semi.
What Is Japandi Style and How Do You Use It in a UK Home?
A plain guide to Japandi: what it means, its five core elements and how to adapt it to a UK terrace, with a worked 12 by 14 ft room plan.
How Do You Buy Furniture in the UK Without Costly Mistakes?
How to check access, quality and total cost before buying furniture in the UK, and what your consumer rights cover if a piece is wrong.
How Much Does an Interior Designer Cost in the UK in 2026?
Hourly, flat-fee and percentage rates for UK interior designers in 2026, what each model really costs, and what a fixed-fee room makeover includes.
How Do You Make a Small Room Feel Bigger Without Building Work?
Clear floor, shallower furniture and one continuous colour do more than mirrors or white paint. The measurements we use to make a small room feel bigger.
Statement Ceilings: How to Design the Fifth Wall in a London Home
Six ways to treat the ceiling, from colour drenching to exposed beams, with when each one works, when it doesn’t and the three ceiling mistakes to avoid.
How to Mix Vintage and Antique Furniture With Modern Interiors Without It Looking Accidental
Mixing vintage and antique furniture with a modern interior: the three principles that make it look intentional, and what to check before you buy.
Why Do Renovations Go Wrong Before the Builder Starts?
Most renovation problems start months before the builder arrives. The order, the lead times and the paperwork that prevent them.
How Do You Transition Your Home From Summer to Autumn?
Light first, textiles second, colour last: how we move a UK home from summer to autumn without repainting or buying new furniture.
What Paperwork Do You Need Before a UK Home Renovation?
Ten documents, and most of them before a builder is appointed: a stage-by-stage plan, a contract checklist, a trade contact list, a condition report of the property, a project schedule, three purchase lists (kitchen, bathroom, electrical), a phase sign-off form and a snagging report. Kitchens, joinery and sanitaryware run 8 to 20 weeks, so the buying lists matter earlier than most people expect.
How to Create a Reading Nook in a London Flat With No Spare Room
A reading nook needs about 3 ft by 4 ft of floor, a chair, a light and a bookshelf, and a London flat almost always has that space already. In a Victorian conversion it is the alcove beside the chimney breast; in a mansion block it is the bay; in a new build it is the dead corner of the living room behind the sofa.
Limewash Walls: What They Are, Why Everyone Wants Them, and How to Get Them Right
If you have spent any time on interiors social media in 2026, you will have seen it: that softly mottled, luminous wall finish that makes a room feel as though it has been standing for centuries without looking remotely dated. Sometimes it is described as lime wash. Sometimes as Venetian plaster. Sometimes, incorrectly, as both interchangeably. Whatever it's called, searches for it among UK homeowners have risen 109% year-on-year, making it the fastest-growing wall finish in British residential interiors right now.
How to Bring Modern Design Into a Period Home Without Ruining It
There is a question that arrives, in some form, in almost every brief Studio Akiva receives for a period property: how much of what's already here do we keep?
Online Interior Design in the UK: A Homeowner's Guide to Choosing the Right Studio
The way British homeowners work with interior designers has shifted significantly in recent years. Where professional design once meant a series of in-home visits, lengthy lead times, and fees that placed it firmly in luxury territory, the online model has changed the calculation entirely. Today, a homeowner anywhere in the UK can work with a studio of genuine calibre, receive photo real 3D concepts of their home, and procure beautifully specified furniture, all without a designer ever needing to set foot through the front door.
The Shoreditch Loft That Finally Looks the Part
There is a particular kind of London flat that torments its owners. It has the bones, the ceiling height, the industrial windows, the sense that something extraordinary is lurking inside, and yet, every morning, it greets them with magnolia walls and laminate flooring. Potential, cruelly withheld.
Midimalism: The Interior Design Movement That Finally Makes Sense for London Homes
For the better part of a decade, British interiors were haunted by two ghosts. The first was minimalism: white walls, bare surfaces, the tyranny of the empty shelf. The second was its eventual reaction, maximalism, with its gallery walls, clashing patterns and proud surplus of things. Both had their adherents. Both, for the majority of homeowners trying to actually live in their homes, had their limitations.
How Do You Redesign a Home Inside a Grade II Listed Building? This London Duplex Has the Answer
There is a particular kind of design problem that most renovation guides never address: what do you do when the building itself is the brief?
The 3-5-7 rule: the secret behind rooms that just feel right
You've walked into someone's home and felt it immediately, that sense of ease, of things belonging together. Here's the principle that's almost certainly behind it.
A Calm Contemporary Retreat in a Historic Marylebone Mansion Block
Built in 1885, Hyde Park Mansions gave upwardly mobile Victorians townhouse stature without the upkeep. Nearly 140 years later, Studio Akiva transformed one of its newly purchased apartments into a home that feels both rooted in its architecture and entirely of the present, designed remotely, procured in full, and delivered without the client needing to be on site.